Talk:Administrative divisions of Ukraine

Page under construction! This article is based on existing Regions of Ukraine page and supposed to be its replace as soon as all necessary links transferred. So please DO NOT MAKE ANY OF THEM A REDIRECT TO OTHER AND DO NOT RENAME THEM until special notice from our team. Thanks everybody for understanding, AlexPU

P.S. HELP! Would someone please drop here a link to explanation how to make a table inside the page. AlexPU


 * Sure: m:Help:Table or How to use tables

Could we change the name to "Subdivisions of Ukraine"? "Subdivision" could also be a verb, and sounds a bit like Partition of Poland. The equivalent Russian article is also called Subdivisions of Russia. Update:  I did it. &mdash;Michael Z. 22:22, 2004 Sep 23 (UTC)

"Oblast's" looks like a mistake every time I glance at it, even though I'm used to reading transliterated Ukrainian. Perhaps we should consider the transliteration of Ukrainian (oblast&apos;, pl. oblasti) to be a different entity from the English translation (oblast, pl. oblasts). &mdash;Michael Z. 21:35, 2004 Sep 17 (UTC)

Oblast names updated
I've finished updating the names of oblasti, and added Alex's tables to the article. Please proof-read the tables.

I think we're almost ready to eliminate Regions of Ukraine (or will it remain as a shortcut page: List of regions in Ukraine)?

What next? Historic regions of Ukraine? An authoritative List of cities in Ukraine (is there a formal definition of city)?



Here's a map I've been working on.

It will take more time to get it ready. I'd like to put a larger one with labels here, or on Regions of Ukraine, and smaller ones on each oblast' page, with the oblast' indicated.

&mdash;Michael Z. 21:11, 2004 Sep 23 (UTC)

I've added some redirects to all the oblasti. Now e.g. you can get to (e.g.) Cherkas'ka oblast' if you type Cherkaska oblast or Cherkas'ka Oblast'. &mdash;Michael Z. 16:44, 2004 Sep 25 (UTC)

Wikiproject
Should we start a formal Wikiproject? There are links to similar projects at WikiProject Countries and WikiProject Countries/Templates/Navboxes. &mdash;Michael Z. 20:07, 2004 Sep 24 (UTC)

I've created WikiProject Ukrainian subdivisions. I'll move some of the in-progress discussion to the project's discussion page. &mdash;Michael Z. 04:00, 2004 Oct 4 (UTC)

Oblast capital?
I've removed this sentence about the oblast' center as it made no sense to me:  This, however, is not a rule of social or cultural development, environmental or crime issues.. Does "this" refer to the city, or to the way "most developed" is judged? Are economically most developed cities chosen? Or was it intended to mean that each capital does not administer its respective province's education, police and other internal affairs? -Wikibob | Talk 19:04, 2004 Nov 30 (UTC)

Writing Ukrainian
I've noticed that some Ukrainian words are written directly in Ukrainian while others show at Unicode entities. Which is the proper way for these characters to be entered into the article? Vivafelis 13:54, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Current entries are to be written directly. Unicode ones are old, yet unconverted but anyone. Feel free to do that, though. Regards, --Irpen 14:29, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Drogobych and Izmail Oblasts; Moldavian ASSR
I have a few old atlases which say that in fact in the 1950's two more oblasts existed in UkSSR. From an excellent collection of topographical maps here is a 1940 atlas, which on Ukraine's map (don't worry its the site that has the permission) clearly shows the Drogobych Oblast and the Moldavian ASSR, as well as the original 1939 border. I have a few late 1940's atlases which show the Izmail oblast as well (basically the part of Odessa oblast that was annexed from Bessarabia in 1940). So how should we present this quite important information? Kuban kazak 00:04, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Naming of oblast articles
text moved here from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Subnational entities/Naming Tobias Conradi (Talk) 03:36, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

(initially moved from User_talk:Tobias Conradi)

Would you stop renaming oblast' until you freaking hear the objections of other Wikipedians Please stop and revert your renamings, than go to the oblast' and WikiProject Ukrainian subdivisions, substantiate your opinion and wait for the whole discussion. Otherwise, you'll be considered a vandal with all consequences. AlexPU

You're given a 24 hour term to fulfill my denamd until you'll be posted in vandalism in progress and banned users pages. AlexPU


 * As I told you, I cannot revert. Tobias Conradi 07:32, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Ok, I will. And you'll be regarded vandal (and your ass watched) for all your freaking Wikilife. Asshole... AlexPU


 * Tobias, das war keine gute Idee von dir. Hier haben sich Leute Monate Gedanken über den Namen der Artikel gemacht, ein Projekt aufgelegt, die Oblast-Seiten einheitlich gestaltet (auch in Zusammenarbeit mit der deutschen WP) und dann kommst du und meinst hier umsortieren zu müssen. Die Verwaltungseinheiten der Ukraine (und anderer ehemaliger UdSSR-Staaten) heißen Oblast und nicht Provinz. Ich hoffe, du wirst bei weiteren Aktionen vorher erst mal versuchen, einen Konsens zu finden mit den Leuten, die wesentlich am Aufbau der Artikel beteiligt waren. --Steschke 07:34, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)


 * You do not have to tell me whether it was a good idea or not. Or do you have the whople wisdom of the world? Even if some wikipedians thougth about it for several month ... maybe they did not think about it enough? I do not know whether my idea was really good, but I saw a lot of different writings for subnational entities, something what is really annoying. Even in Ukraine you did not standardize all, because sometimes you were speaking of regions. Furthermore this is english wikipedia, for thai or japanese provinces nobody uses the local name. It is really nice to have the name. Maybe it would alos be a good idea to standardize on local names. But than - do it for all. (my opinion.) I will not always look for consensus if I think there is something to improve. We would not have wikipedia here if we would allways make consensus. So you can hope for this, but it will be in vain. Tobias Conradi 17:33, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've reverted the changed articles from the form Kirovohrad Province to Kirovohrads'ka oblast'. What a big waste of time for all of us! Please folks: if you're going to change a body of work that a group of wikipedians has discussed and executed, whether you are right or wrong, talk to them first.

If you want to change this, I suggest you first get consensus from the participants in both WikiProject Ukrainian subdivisions and WikiProject Russian federal subjects. &mdash;Michael Z. 2005-03-6 01:19 Z 


 * ...and with the Ukraine-Mafia on de:WP too. --Steschke 13:19, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)
 * thx for pointing this out :-) Tobias Conradi 18:20, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Raion names
I can't find what, if anything, was decided about naming Ukrainian Raions on WP. Should I follow the oblast naming convention and name the raion after the central city, e.g. Chernihiv Raion as opposed to Chernihivs'kyi Raion? Or do we transliterate the raion name, e.g. Chernihivs'kyi Raion? I'm not arguing either way, just want to start building some templates. This particularly affects templates, where cities are sometimes listed along with raions and the 2 lists would be indistinguishable without the suffix on the raion names. So far, the completed templates I've seen indicate that we do not imitate the oblast naming convention when naming raions. Correct?--tufkaa 18:51, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I would prefer to go with the raion's seat location name as more telling to the reader what this is all about. But I don't feel too strong about it. Also, I am not sure whether there are Raions with non-city names, like in cases of Oblasts the Volhynian, Transcarpathian and (former) Crimean ones. If we adopt the convention, we should be consistent. --Irpen 19:01, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, compare Template:Cherkasy Oblast with Template:Donetsk_Oblast. The Donets'k version seems to make more sense to me. I belive that for the most part, people have been entering empty raion links into the body of WP articles with the suffix, but I may be wrong.--tufkaa 19:13, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

More: Template:Donetsk Oblast spells raions ending in yi (apparently this is more prevalent on Google), while Template:Kherson Oblast finishes them with y. Also, no template so far has a Міста обласного значення section. In reading the Kyiv article, it mentions that Kyiv is a municipality. Is this similar? Lastly, some templates include a Towns section. Is this for CMTs? I know, I know, "be bold". But I would like to here other's thoughts. I'm playing with the Chernihiv Oblast at User:Tufkaa/Sandbox.--tufkaa 15:06, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Speaking about the raion names, the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers site uses y. I don't really know why I used yi on the Donetsk Oblast template, but it doesn't matter to me which ending we should use for the raion names. About using either Uman Raion or Umansky Raion, if we use the first way then that might confuse some because there are two of the same names on the temp, which is why AlexPU recently changed the Ukraine template, to create disambiguity. But we could list the raions as Zhytomyr Raion instead of Zhytomyr which links to the same article, but that might make the template look too big.


 * Also, while I was working on the templates, I included the Міста обласного значення into the cities section like in the Donetsk Oblast Template. Am I correct? —DDima (talk) 17:04, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Other than eating up a little more space in the template by including the word "Raion" after each Raion name, it makes sense to do it with Raionsbut since we do it with Oblasts already. Also, using AlexPU's precendent in the Ukraine template, we can include Міста обласного значення in the raions section, like he did for Kyiv (Kyiv City and Kyiv Oblast). So I'll construct the Chernihiv template like that, and then move on by fixing old templates, or creating ones for oblasts which just have "Cities in..." templates.
 * Any thoughts on CMTs? --tufkaa 17:26, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I think that will work out nicely:))). —DDima (talk) 17:54, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I share the view that in any template each item sould be stated once. Therefore, I don't think it's a good idea to dublicate information, like first listing "Raions: Cherkasy City", and then listing "Cities: Cherkasy", with both directing to the same page (as it's in Cherkasy Oblast template). Also, take a note that at the Verhovna Rada website "mista oblastnogo znachennya" are grouped with "mista rajonnogo znachennya" into "mista". I think this is the preferred way, rather than listing "mista oblastnogo znachennya" twice, first as raions, and then as cities. To avoid misunderstanding "Raions" may be listed as "Agriculture Raions" or "Rural Raions", or just "Raions" with explanation provided at the linked page. MapLover 00:46, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Possible templates
With the goal of standardization, should we create an Infobox template for Ukrainian Oblasts and/or Raions based on the following? Let me know what you think!--tufkaa 19:05, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Template:Infobox U.S. state
 * Template:Canadian province or territory
 * Template:Crimean region
 * Template:General geographic template
 * It seems like a resonable idea. Because now they only contain basic info, no governors or whatever they call them, year of oblast formation, geographic details, time zones, etc.... —dima  /  /  / 19:15, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

What about Template:Infobox oblast? From the constitution it seems that there are "Oblast Councils" with the councils picking their respective "Council Chairmen" from amoungst their members. (I should probably change it to "Chairperson", now that I'm reading it over...) So I've incorporated this information into the Info box and removed and added what I think worked. Let me know what you think!--tufkaa 20:54, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Ukraine is all one time zone, so I don't know if it counts as vital information as in the North American templates.--tufkaa 20:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I like the looks of it and am trying it out right now. But I feel it needs more work, maybe adding licence plate codes (we can get from RU wiki) and other corrections... —dima  /  /  / 21:26, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I tried it at Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast (which was just a stub). We can definitely improve it. I've palced the syntax in the template's talk page. Have fun!--tufkaa 22:05, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that maybe we should rm the oblast detail map, just put it into the article by itself., because the article looks too bulky. What do you think?? Also, what about GDP...where are we going to get the information? —dima  /  /  / 23:04, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Nice template, guys! Few remarks:
 * Oblast map is needed in addition of the oblast being mapped on Ukrainian map. Ideally, it should be a small map with borders of raions, and cities of oblast subordinance.
 * "Council seats" is something that nobody cares of.
 * I would add "Governor" in addition to "Council Chairmen". As of now, governors are less important, so Council Chairmen goes first, and Governor name in the second line.
 * There are no data for GDP per Oblast in Ukraine. Also, such data, if available, should be called Gross Oblast Product (GOP), similarly to Gross State Product (GSP) for each state in the U.S. But give that it's not available, instead I would use average monthly wage income. Average salary can be given for each year, then the rank of the regions according to the index, and also the salary growth rate compare to the previous year.
 * For population it would be nice to add annual population growth rate.
 * I'm not aware of ISO3166-2 and FIPS10-4 abbreviations for Ukrainian regions. I would put there postal code, phone area prefix(es), and regional internet prefix (like "dn.ua" for Donetsk, "dp.ua" for Dnipropetrovsk, etc) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MapLover (talk • contribs).
 * I think that those changes can be done... —dima /  /  / 01:14, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Also, how about adding official language...? Because Russian is official in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblast's and Magyar has Some official rights in the Zakarpattia Oblast... —dima  /  /  / 01:33, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I omitted putting in an Offical Languages sections on purpose. IMO, I think we should strive to have these templates as non-controversial as possible. Bringing up the topic of Official Languages would bring out the trolls, and there is no need to stoke those flames... As for the Oblast map: I looked at U.S. states, the Provinces of Canada, and the States of Germany, for comparison purposes. None of their infoboxes included anything past a national map with the state/oblast highlited. Detailed maps were included in the separate section of the article devoted to the area's subdivisions. If there is no GDP information available, why don't we just list the major industries of the oblast? Ranking oblasts by avaerage salary seems weird to me. I would like to include soem economic infomation, however maybe we shoudl just write something generic like list the oblast industries. Let's do indeed add population growth rate. That's a great idea. I included links to find out the actual ISO3166-2 and FIPS10-4 abbreviations within the template itself. The Infobox will probably be the only place where the article will link to such information, so I say keep it in. We can add the phone area code and regional internet prefix as well. I have NO IDEA about oblast government, but did deduce the information about the council from the constitution. If there is in fact a governor (which is alluded to in periodicals, but is not mentioned in the constitution for soem reason?!?!) we should add him/her, but I think we should also list the size of the council. If my state were being run by 5 people, I think I would like to know.

Those are my thoughts for now.--tufkaa 03:46, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


 * For me, national map with oblast highlighted looks nice, I like it. The second official language is a hot issue in Ukraine now, I don't mind including languages into templates, but the legitimacy of such actions by local councils is questionable, so it’s not clear which languages we should put in. It’s also hard to define major industries for each oblast. People will try to add the industry they work for, claiming it’s the main one. Average wage may not be the best indicator, but this is one of few available indicators per oblast. In fact, I think this is the best available economic indicator, which allows differentiating oblasts economically. In Ukraine, people are talking about this indicator, comparing average salaries in their regions with salaries in Kiev. Finally, Governors are appointed by the President, and Oblast Councils are directly elected by citizents. These are two elements of the system of power on Oblast level, so both should be mentioned. I also think about some indicator of the dominant political patry in the region. In some regions there is a rulling coalition, so it’s not clear which single party is dominant. But, as one idea, we may list the party of Council Chairmen, which is a good proxy for the rulling political party in Oblast. MapLover 07:06, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The size of Oblast Concil is 100, or 120, or 80 members, or something like this. If it were 5 members, people would probably care, but as of now they don't. I don't mind keeping this information, but I wanted to point out that it's not essential. Proposing something to be added ito template, I felt obligated to propose some for exclusion too. MapLover 07:16, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I first want to say that I've learned more about the way the Ukrainian government functions in the last few weeks than I ever thought I would care to know about. Very fascinating about the system of appointing governors and the size of the oblast council. As a starting point, I would still prefer to list the size of the council in the Infobox, primarily because it's an interesting fact I never knew about, nor would I even know where else I could find out about this information. Eventually such information could be included in a "Government of x Oblast" subheading, or even an individual article. You've convinced me about including average salary indicators. I'll put something in. Great idea about including the political parties of the governor and the ruling council. Remember to check out both the Template:Infobox oblast as well as the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast article to see how this will actually look.--tufkaa 15:53, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok, so is the "governor" of an oblast the "Голова облдержадміністрації"? Or is that the "council chair"? If the "Голова облдержадміністрації" is in fact the "governor", is the "Council Chair" the "керівник апарату обласної державної адміністрації"? Confused...--tufkaa 17:47, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Using some crude translation services, uk → ru → en,
 * I get: Голова облдержадміністрації → Председатель облгосадминистрации → Chairman oblgosadministratsii
 * And: керівник апарату обласної державної адміністрації → руководитель аппарата областной государственной администрации → The head of the device of regional state administration.
 * So, if these translations are correct (which I am 50% for and 50% against), I believe that the Голова облдержадміністрації is the chairman and керівник апарату обласної державної адміністрації is the governour??? —dima  /  /  / 18:56, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, according to the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast website, the "Голова облдержадміністрації" - Roman Tkach - is a member of Our Ukraine, while the "керівник апарату обласної державної адміністрації" - Vasyl Tymkiv - is a member of the Ukrainian National Assembly. If, as MapLover stated, the president of Ukraine appoints the "governor", wouldn't it be Tkach, a member of his own party? Something to think about.--tufkaa 19:01, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Well I know for sure that the governour is appointed by the President of Ukraine, see bottom paragraph in the first section of RU wiki. So, I guess that what you said is most likely correct..  —dima  /  /  / 19:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

My opinion: I thoroughly support non-inclusion of such an inflammatory and uncertain field as "Official language". Should that have been at least certain, it the mention would be warranted. As long as the legitimacy of these decisions are up in the air (no matter how supportive the public is), this does not belong to the infobox. What can be done, is a mere mention of those decisions in the text flow, but not in the infobox.

"Голова облдержадміністрації" is best translated as the "Head of the Oblast State Administration (Governor)". I would add the "Governor" in parentheses to make it easier for the non-Ukrainian reader to understand the closest similar English language term. I would also add there "Appointed by the President by the recommendation of the Prime-minister" and add his party affiliation. Also note, that if he is a member of small party that is affiliated with the larger party, it is better to give the larger party, e.g. "Sobor" or "UNA" -> Our Ukraine

"Kерівник апарату обласної державної адміністрації" is not the post important enough to be mentioned at all.

Oblast map indeed not to the infobox, but to the appropriate section.

"Chairman of the Oblast Counsil" is of course needed as well as his party affiliation. Distribution of the counsil membership by parties is useful.

Economic and demographic indicators are a great idea. --Irpen 20:20, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


 * "Governour" = "Голова обласної державної адміністрації" = "Head of Oblast Administration"
 * "Council Chairmen" = "Голова обласної ради" = "Head of Oblast Rada"
 * For example, in Donetsk Oblast, Анатолій Близнюк is голова Донецької обласної ради, elected by Oblast Concil (Oblast Rada) on April 25, 2006, and Володимир Логвиненко is голова Донецької обласної державної адміністрації, appointed by the President on May 16, 2006 . FYI, website of Donetsk Oblast Administration is and website of Donetsk Oblast Council is . -- MapLover 20:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

One important detail, according to the changes of the constitution, the governors are appinted by President by recommendation of the prime-minister. This is very important to add. If Ukraine is indeed getting a PR prime-minister, without such addition the readers would wonder how come a president like Yushchenko appointed the governor like, say, Kushnaryov. As such, this additional info about the appointment mechanism is important. --Irpen 20:52, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Cities and towns
Hi, folks! I've noticed that the Ukrainian administrative divisions templates list cities and towns separately, but I couldn't figure out how you distinguish between the two. From what I know, they are all called "мiста" in Ukrainian. What criteria do you use to separate them? Are those criteria official, or is just for convenience sake? If there was a discussion about that in the past, I would appreciate a link. Thanks.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:06, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
 * From what I know: мiста is translated as city and селище міського типу = Urban type settlement are towns. But I do believe that they are official...Hope that helps, —dima  /  /  / 19:33, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, I didn't notice that before, but I am afraid you are right. Do you folks have any plans to correct that?  Technically, urban-type settlements are not towns (even though their populations are classified as urban).  They are not considered towns in modern Russia, nor were they in the former Soviet Union.  Ukraine continues to list them separately and none of the смт's have an official "town" status&mdash;things are pretty much the same as they were in Soviet times.  All this leads me to believe that calling them "towns" is just plain wrong.  Why don't you just call them "urban-type settlements"?  The term is established in English, and we have an article about that term, and there is a section pertaining to Ukraine in that article.  Are there some other reasons I am not seeing?  Cheers,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I think town came about because of space-constriants in the context of the template. I know that we've retired the term townlet, but should we not ever refer to a CMT as a town? I guess we should be more precise about listing things as towns vs. urban-type settlement, but I am not sure of the importance as town has a general meaning much like municipality.--tufkaa 20:41, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Exactly my thoughts... —dima /  /  / 20:44, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Support. --Irpen 20:52, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't mean to push my views on you, but rearranging templates' layouts so that the designation (i.e., "city", "district", "urban-type settlement") is at the top of the group as opposed to the left of it should take care of the space constraints. The reason why I am hesitant to apply the term "town" to smt's is because smt's do not have town status.  I am not aware of how it is done in Ukraine, but in modern Russia a settlement is not a gorod until it is granted status goroda (town status).  Hence, calling urban-type settlements "towns" is simply illogical, not to mention confusing.  Even if you segregate between "cities" and "towns", the former being cities proper, and the latter&mdash;smt's, it wreaks minor havoc in articles in which one has to compare administrative structures of the countries of the former Soviet Union (think "a town is a town in Russia but not really a town in Ukraine").


 * The bottom line is that current system may work fine when contained to Ukrainian topics, but does not work really well when you start comparing countries and try to work out analogies in terminology. IMO, re-introducing the term "townlet" for Ukrainian topics would probably be a better solution than continuing calling smt's "towns".&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:06, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Ezhiki, you are pushing for "gorod" been translated as both "city" and "town" with artificial division between them. You are even going to such extreme as introducing terminology "superlarge towns" for cities with over 3 mln. population [1]. This is not a common English meaning of word "town". Commonly "town" applies to "residential community of people ranging from a few hundred to several thousands" [2] . According to both criteria: (1) population and (2) type of settlement (urban vs. rural) "town" matches "selysche mis'kogo tupy", and only loosely it may apply to any "misto" ("gorod"). Speaking on status, "gorod status" stands for "city status", which is going back to Magdeburg city rights. The best advice would be to bring Russian terminology, which currently uses the word "town" in place of "city" closer to the commonly recognized terminology, and leave "towns" available for "poselok". MapLover 21:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Ezhiki, it was previously discussed [1] and [2]. As a summary of the discussion, "an SMT is a small settlement of urban character — in common parlance, a town." MapLover 21:06, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I think this goes back to Ëzhiki's earlier question about the distinction between cities and towns. The short answer, is that we relate "мiста" with cities and "селище міського типу" with towns. Basically, since a town is generally thought of as larger than a village but smaller than a "city" and can represent a population from a few hundred to several thousands, it approximates the description of a CMT. Am I to understand then, that "город" would not be used for a Russian city, like "мiстo" would be used in Ukrainian? --tufkaa 21:26, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Whatever we end up with, we must make it clear what means what in the context of these articles. If we adopt a universal approach that Misto=City and SMT=Town, there should be not only consistensy, but clarity on what is meant. I don't like the solution to add (selyshche miskoho typu) in parantheses to all articles as it is a meanigless and annoying clutter for all readers. --Irpen 22:13, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


 * It was partially addressed in Category:Cities in Ukraine, Category:Towns in Ukraine, and Category:Villages in Ukraine. But, I don't see a problem if inside an article in the first paragraph some additional description is given, like "city of oblast subordinance", "small city", "a part of metropolitan", "large urban type settlement", etc. MapLover 22:55, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Wow, I am surprised with so many responses. Did I touch a loose nerve here or what? Anyway, let me try to respond to all of the concerns raised so far, hopefully I won't miss anything. Lingvo defines "посёлок" as a "settlement, village, community". I doubt a Ukrainian-English dictionary would give you a much different translation. The closest match I was able to find was Oxford's translation of "township" as "посёлок". Still, "township", not "town", and this variant is to translate an English term into Russian, not a Russian-specific term into English!
 * 1) MapLover. The division of towns into small, medium, big, large, larger, and superlarge was not my idea.  It actually came from the old edition of the Russian Land Code, which inherited these definitions from Soviet times.  I do, however, agree that the term "superlarge towns" sounds plain bad in English (I've just edited the definitions to sound better).
 * 2) MapLover. I want to point out that in common parlance the difference between a city and a town is determined by population size, not by official status.  This difference is often well-perceived, but is very rarely documented.  In any case, such difference is only applicable to English-speaking countries.  Once you try using both terms ("city" and "town") in languages that only have one word to describe the urban concept ("мiсто" in Ukrainian, "город" in Russian), you are bound to run into problems.  The solutions are quite limited:
 * 3) use one word and never use the other (i.e., use exclusively "city" or "town"). This does wonders for consistency and standardization, but leads to awkward constructs such as "superlarge towns";
 * 4) use both words collectively (i.e., always spell out "cities (towns)"). This partially avoids awkwardness of the previous solution, but introduces a new one&mdash;having to read that "Vladivostok is a city (town) in Russia, and Mykolaiv is a city (town) in Ukraine" may get quite annoying after while;
 * 5) introduce some sort of artificial division between a city and a town. That's what's currently done for Russia (settlements with town status with population below 100K are called "towns", over 100K&mdash;"cities").  It's consistent and logical, but the downside is that it is on the verge of original research and may become a point of controversy later (people argued about more stupid things than that in the past).  Another possible solution is to refer to oblast-level settlements with town status as "cities", and raion-level ones as "towns".  It's also logical and consistent, but no less artificial.
 * 6) MapLover. Now, you seem to have found another solution&mdash;seemingly a good compromise based on item 3.1 above.  You proposed (and implemented) the system where settlements with town status are called "cities" and urban-type settlements are called "towns".  Let me explain why I see this as a huge problem.  MapLover states that this system is based on the definition of a town as "a residential community of people ranging from a few hundred to several thousand", as defined in the Wikipedia town article.  Tufkaa's further comment adds the definition of a town as something "larger than a village but smaller than a city".  The following were immediate red flags for me:
 * 7) Describing the administrative structure of any country based on a statement that "a town is larger than a village but smaller than a city" is pretty much the same as building theoretical physics based on a statement that "an atom is larger than an elementary particle but smaller than a molecule". Both statements are factually correct and give an uninformed reader a very good understanding of a concept.  Problem is, none of these statements is good for anything more than a basic overview.  The first statement is perfectly suitable in an very generic overview article such as town, but once you move further than a basic level, you need details and additional facts.  You cannot give readers understanding of more advanced concepts of theoretical physics if you keep referring to an atom as a "small molecule"; you are bound to misinform and confuse them.  Truth is, a "city" ("town") take different meanings in different countries.  In Russia, for example, the definition of a "city" ("town") is set independently by each federal subject.  A settlement that meets city/town criteria in Kaliningrad Oblast wouldn't have a chance in, say, Moscow Oblast.  I don't know whether it is done in the same way in Ukraine, or if there is one definition applicable to all Ukraine's subdivisions, but I am quite sure it is also legislated and well-defined.  Whatever the definition is, the term "town status" is bound to show up there.
 * 8) Speaking of town (city) status. Like I said before, unless you folks intend to continue with "small molecules" the towns construct, you will have to move to a more detailed level.  In general, the town (city) status is the main criterion that distinguishes one sort of "residential community of people ranging from a few hundred to several thousand" from another.  In Russia, there are plenty of urban-type settlements of "several thousand", as well as towns of "a few hundred"; there are probably a few examples in Ukraine as well.  This alone shows that size cannot be the only decisive indicator.  I simply fail to understand why you are so hesitant to use a far more precise term "urban(-type) settlement", which describes exactly the specifics of smt's/pgt's, and prefer to use a vague term such as "town", which, among many other things, is not even an accurate translation!  Just for kicks, I checked my Oxford Russian Dictionary.  Here is what it says under "посёлок":
 * 1. settlement (of urban type); (new) housing estate; 2. (in former USSR, name of administrative unit) settlement

Anyway, the bottom line. I am not demanding that you make immediate changes to conform with my views, lest you got that impression. However, I personally think it is very amateurish to use a vague and poorly applicable term (think about "small molecules" again) to describe a very specific and well-defined concept such as urban-type settlement. I also realize that other available solutions (3.1 through 3.3 above) are far from perfect, although if I thought of 3.3(2) (oblast-level=city; raion-level=town, as opposed to a set population threshold) earlier, I would have probably adopted it for Russian locations. I very much disagree with Irpen's statement that the misto=city, smt=town convention is going to bring consistency and clarity. It ensures consistency only as long as you are confined to internal Ukrainian topics and don't have to make comparisons with other countries, and it brings no clarity because readers truly interested in the topic (i.e., needing more than a very basic overview) are bound to be confused by the difference between so-called "towns" in Ukraine and towns in the rest of the world. I am also not aware of the "smt=town" convention being used anywhere else outside Ukrainian topics in Wikipedia (I'll be glad to be prooven wrong here, though) &mdash;did someone say original research?

So, have it whatever way you feel necessary. It hurts my eyes to see smt's being referred to as "towns", but since I am not planning on getting involved in editing Ukrainian topics too much any time soon, I just don't feel it's morally proper of me to push you into a major overhaul just for the sake of enforcing consistency in a very specialized topic. You all probably have better things to do than that.

I am still willing to continue this discussion, if anyone is up to it. Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:49, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Intermediate summary
(Ezhiki: please correct if needed; I'll try to respond late today) MapLover 20:23, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for taking time to compile this, you got it exactly right. The only thing I want to add is that Russian rural settlements are called "rural(-type) settlements" only collectively; some of the Russian rural settlement types have Wikipedia entries as well (e.g., selo, aul, khutor, stanitsa, etc.), although using "village" for any of them is acceptable when there is no need to distinguish among these types.  Legislative documents of the Russian federal subjects define the term "rural(-type) settlement" via exclusion, i.e., rural settlements are all inhabited localities which are neither cities (towns) nor urban-type settlements.  All this, however, does not seem to matter much in the subject we are trying to settle, but I thought you might be interested in knowing it.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:41, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

(corrected the table; keeping villages for completeness) MapLover 20:47, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Ezhiki, you wrote that the "in common parlance the difference between a city and a town is determined by population size, not by official status. This difference is often well-perceived, but is very rarely documented." In contrary, there are definitions of town by size: "an urban area with a fixed boundary that is smaller than a city", as well as by status, for example in New England, "In New York State a town is a political subdivision of a county, similar to what are called townships in some other states. Towns cover the entire area of a county, except those areas covered by a city or an Indian reservation." , or in Canada "A town is an independent municipal corporation having all the powers and responsibilities conferred on it by The Urban Municipality Act, 1984"

Lingvo online dictionary, which incorporates a set of dictionaries, translates town as город or городок, with the meaning to be в противоположность сельской местности. As one of examples, "company town" is translated as "поселок, расположенный на территории, принадлежащей промышленной фирме".

The terminology "urban-type settlement" is usually applies not only to смт, but also to cities. For example, 2001 Census site states that there are "1344 міських поселення, у тому числі 454 міста"

Also, with respect to the status, you apply the terminology "town status" as a reason for мiсто to be called as town. In fact, there is a clear status for each settlement, the status of мiсто, the status of селище міського типу, the status of сільський населений пункт. The word status is applied in pair in this respect, that is if мicто=city, then мicто status=city status. Similarly, if town=селище міського типу, then status of селище міського типу=town status. The status of селище міського типу is well defined.

Next, you specified two red flags. First, you are puzzled by town status been applied to something, which was not granted such rights. Historically, there were town privileges, "stadtrecht", with literally means "city rights", but neither мicта, nor смт in Ukraine are currently subject to such historical rights. In fact, as of today мicта, смт, села are primary geographic identities with well specified boundaries. Some смт and села are rulled by a local council of that settlement, others are grouped and rulled by one coucil. As of now, both, мicто status and смт status is a recognishion of being a separate geographic unit. These units are recognized by Constitution (chapter: Територіальний устрій України).

Second red flag, in addition to "town status" you are puzzled by the ways to provide more detailed levels of subdivision. As of now, "міста областного значення" are named as "cities of oblast subordinance", "міста районного значення" are just called cities. There are "міста з районним поділом", which are usually oblast centers, which may be named "cities with raion subdivision". Towns, defined as cмт, do not need further subdivision.

Finally, to be honest, the division according to 100K threshold seems to be more original than anything else. It's also not practical, as population is changing, and there is a constant movement of settlements between these two categories, which may be worsened by a potential disagreement on the sources of population data. Contrary to that, the changes of status from смт to мicто are not so common, with clear authority over such changes. Only 3 мicта has been officially added in the last 5 years.

And, again, a town in English is usually understood as (1) urban settlement (2) with population from a few hundred to several thousands. Смт matches these two criteria. The definition used by Russian wikicommunity effectively sets limits on town population between 10K and 100K, which is off the second criteria. MapLover 01:37, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I've just read this, and looks like we are going in circles. To (hopefully) make things easier, before you read the long rant of mine below, where I'll address the issues raised above, could you please give me a straightforward answer to the following question: "Why should the term "urban-type settlements" not be used in reference to smt's?".  Just list all the downsides, without mentioning any meaning of the term "town".
 * Now, back to the intermediate summary above.
 * City vs. town. The very definition of the town you quoted (a town is smaller than a city) just confirms what I've previously stated&mdash;the chief difference between a city and a town is size .  Note, however, that this generic definition does not clue you in just how much smaller it should be.  In common parlance, a town is smaller, but no one can say for sure by what margin.
 * Official status in English-speaking countries. The official status specifying the difference exists in some countries, that is true (U.S.'s New England and Canada are both fine examples).  Problem is, those countries speak English, so for them a difference between the two terms is native.  For Ukraine, Russia, etc. both terms are merely translations of the concept.  The meaning of that is if in U.S. and Canada the difference between a "city" and a "town" is defined by legislation (The Urban Municipal Act of 1984 you mentioned for Canada, for example), for xUSSR countries the difference is up to the translator.  One can very well justify calling an smt or even a larger village a "town" in common speach, but for describing administrative divisions, where precision is a must, such convention is clearly unacceptable.  Neither Ukraine nor Russia can legislate the difference between two English terms, so we must rely on translations.  As both of us showed above, both terms are translated from English as misto/gorod.
 * Smt/pgt. Having considered the city vs. town issue (as it exists in the English language), let's now re-introduce the smt's/pgt's into the mix.  As you rightfully noted, the population of smt's/pgt's is considered urban.  It is classified as such in both the Ukrainian 2001 Census and the Russian 2002 Census.  The tradition of classifying smt's/pgt's population as urban goes back to Soviet times.  Then (as it is now in Russia and, I assume, in Ukraine) a pgt was defined as an inhabited locality with the population size insufficient for the locality to be granted city status (I'll speak more of the city status later below).  Most often, the pgts were not much bigger than villages.  The main difference was that the majority of the population had to be employed in industries other than agriculture.  Still, pgt was not a city, it was merely an additional classification, one in between the cities proper and the rural settlements.
 * Is smt a "town"?. Now, the big question.  I now very well understand your logic&rarr; since an smt is smaller than a city but bigger than a village, and since in English the term "town" is generally defined as a location smaller than a city but bigger than a village, then an smt must be a town.  Furthermore, since in some countries cities and towns have different official statuses, and in Ukraine/Russia cities and smt's/pgt's have different official statuses, then, again, an smt must be a town (if I got any of this wrong, please correct me, as I am going to use these two sentences as a summary of your point of view).  Here is what I see wrong with this picture:
 * The first part of the statement is built on an analogy. It is a very good analogy to facilitate an understanding of what kind of animal an smt is, but it is logically inconsistent.  You are drawing an equal sign based on analogy alone.  If you replace the word "town" with "urban-type settlement", the meaning of the first sentence will not change at all!  The sentence will still remain a raw analogy with insufficient logics, but you will at least be using a more precise term ("urban-type settlement" describes smt's/pgt's, and only smt's/pgt's) instead of a vague one ("town" can mean very many things).
 * The second part of the statement introduces the term "official status", making the first part more balanced and logical. Then, again, if you replace "town" with "urban-type settlement" in the whole statement (in both of its parts), the meaning will not suffer.
 * Now, the biggest problem of them all. You equal the difference between a city and a town in some other countries (Canada, New England) with the difference between a misto/gorod and an smt/pgt in Ukraine/Russia.  I simply cannot accept this as a valid comparison!  A bean is different from a pea, and a misto is different from an smt, but it doesn't mean that we can call an smt a "pea"!  We just don't have common grounds for such an analogy.  Truth is, every single country in the world has administrative structure of its own.  Administrative structures of some countries may be identical (when one country borrows a structure from another), or very similar (when two countries, such as Ukraine and Russia, share the same (Soviet) administrative structure, which they later modified in different ways), or very dissimilar.  Finding analogies in dissimilar administrative structures (such as Canada and Ukraine) is very useful to reach common understanding, but when studying the structures in depth, one has to abandon such analogies in favor of more precise terminology.  If you equal an "smt" with a "town", and then "smt status" with "town status", then you imply there is no difference between town status in Canada and an smt status in Ukraine.  Is it true?  No.  Is it confusing?  Yes.  A Canadian town is different from a Canadian city in a completely different way than a Ukrainian smt is different from a Ukrainian misto.  Status of misto/gorod in Ukraine/Russia and statuses of both cities and towns in Canada indeed date to the historical traditions of city rights, but the status of smt/pgt does not&mdash;the whole concept of an urban-type settlement is a result of Soviet industrialization efforts; it is quite recent.  If you understand that, you'll see the very problem with calling an smt a "town" I am trying to explain.  Furthemore, you state that the difference between cities/urban-type settlements/villages is merely geographic and historical (in fact, as of today мicта, смт, села are primary geographic identities with well specified boundaries).  This is completely untrue.  In Russia, the difference between goroda and pgt's is clearly spelled out in the legislation of each federal subject (see, for example, Article 10 of the Law of the Republic of Adygea #171 of April 26, 2000: On the Administrative-Territorial Organization of the Republic of Adygea; I can email you that document if you ask).  Let me assure you, the difference is far from being simply "geographical" and "historical".  Goroda have more options of self-government available to them, and taxation in urban-type settlements is very different from that in villages.  Differences between derevnya, selo, stanitsa, aul (all classified as rural settlements) are indeed simply historical, but the differences between rural settlements, urban-type settlements, and cities/towns are absolutely not.  Again, I don't know if Ukraine abandonded those differences (I very much doubt that), but perhaps you could look it up in appropriate Ukrainian legislative documents and clarify that once and for all (I am, unfortunately, not very confident in my abilities to perform such a search in Ukrainian).
 * All this being said, I return to my original question&mdash;what problems do you see with calling smt's "urban-type settlements"? My other question is whether you could tell me which other sources refer to smt's/pgt's as "towns".  Britannica has no problem with calling them "urban settlements".  What benefit is in translating a perfectly well-defined concept with a vague term when there is an exact one?  I would also appreciate Irpen's opinion&mdash;he very enthusiastically encouraged me to get rid of all references to "townlet" in favor of more precise "urban-type settlement", but now seems to favor the "town" solution.
 * As a post-scriptum&mdash;I do completely agree with you that the 100K limit is very artificial and reeks of original research. I must, however, clarify, that I neither advocate for it to be used for Ukrainian articles, nor do I assert this convention must be followed in Russian ones.  The 100K limit is merely a convenient way to maintain consistency (i.e., specifying exactly how small a city should become before becoming a "town").  The population count source is also not a problem&mdash;for Russia it is always the most recent Census data.  Furthermore, Russian goroda are always referred to as "cities and towns", never emphasizing what the difference between two is (although implying, of course, that the difference is in size).&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:08, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, my thoughts on that evolved with time. There is nothing wrong and impossible to that. MichaelZ may still remember how I advocated using "province" or "region" for Oblast originally. Later, I realized that it's better to use Oblast and the reason is the same as Ezhiki stated, administrative subdivisions are unique per countries and the loose translation relay the info too imprecisely. As per this, I am now inclined to use Urban-type settlement in articles to describe smt/pgt's, especially the U-t s is an article now. --Irpen 19:42, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Q.: "Why should the term "urban-type settlements" not be used in reference to smt's?".
 * 1. It may be used, however, there is another term ("town"), which is more familiar and common in English, and which adequately describes the concept.
 * 2. Precisely, the term "urban-type settlements" means settlements of urban type. Such settlements include mista/goroda, and smt/pgt.
 * 3. Practically, in templates a shorter name is more desirable. Assuming for a moment that "towns" and "urban-type settlements" are perfect substitutes, the first one is more practical to use.


 * Ezhiki, I previously stated that as of today мicта, смт, села are primary geographic identities with well specified boundaries, which you claimed is untrue. To address this moment, I want to remind that this statement was a part of discussion on "city rights", and it's really true that mista, smt, and sela are merely territorial units. These units are primary building blocks from which local communities consist of, and the rights are going by local communities. In Ukraine, local community rights are spelled out in the Law "Про місцеве самоврядування в Україні" (о местном самоуправлении). Local Council = Rada is the main element is of the system. It's common for a few territorial units to be governed by one Rada. In total, there are 27,188 villages (selo) in Ukraine, and 10,280 Village Councils, thus on average 3 sela are grouped into 1 community. Also, Ukraine is a unitary state, thus Subdivisions of Ukraine are regulated exclusively by the Ukrainian parliament, not by any lower level communities (with the exception of Crimea republic). by the Ukrainian parliament, which in particular classifies the territorial units, and by local communities within the limits set by law, which includes the rights by Oblast Rada to create, rename, combine, or abolish lower level territorial units or communities.


 * Since 1997 the new Law “Про територіальний устрій України” has been under consideration. Early editions of the law passed preliminary readings, but it has not been adopted yet. The latest version reads:


 * Стаття 5. Статус поселень
 * За чисельністю населення та соціально-економічними характеристиками поселення мають наступний статус:
 * 1. Село – поселення з переважно сільською садибною забудовою і сталим складом населення і чисельністю до 5000 жителів, які у більшості зайняті в сільському, лісовому та рибному господарстві, народних промислах, первинній переробці сільськогосподарської та рибної проду-кції.
 * 2. Містечко – поселення, утворення та розвиток якого пов’язаний з розташуванням на його території промислових підприємств, залізничних вузлів, гідротехнічних та інших споруд і об’єктів з чисельністю населення до 10 тисяч жителів, які у більшості зайняті у несільськогоспо-дарському виробництві чи соціально-культурній сфері, і в якому створено умови для надання населенню адміністративних, соціальних та культурних послуг.
 * З. Місто – поселення з компактною забудовою та чисельністю населення не менше ніж 10 тисяч жителів, яке має розвинуту соціальну, комунальну, транспортну інфраструктуру, жителі якого у більшості своїй зайняті у промисловості, торгівлі, управлінні, сфері послуг, сфері культури.


 * As you see, the proposed law further simplifies the territorial structuture, by literaly changing “селище міського типу” into “містечко” (городок) and by aggregating all “сiльськi населені пункти”, such as “ceла” and “селища”, into “села”.


 * You also mentioned that my logic is based on the following: an smt is smaller than a city but bigger than a village, and since in English the term "town" is generally defined as a location smaller than a city but bigger than a village, then an smt must be a town.. If it were only smaller/bigger then your physics example may apply. But it’s more than just smaller/bigger. As highlighted a few times, smt matches town because: a town is an urban community with few hundred - few thousand people, and smt is an urban settlement generally with up to ten thousand people . Both, type and population of smt and town match each other.


 * In the end, I see that you are not comfortable yourself with 100K threshold for distinguishing cities and towns. Then, if you are looking for a reasonable threshold, I would recommend to consider 10K. This threshold naturally matched the inherited meaning of the word town, and this threshold matches the official subdivision of urban settlements into мicта and cмт (with few exceptions). MapLover 23:21, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Guys, first of all, let's put aside what might come out of the proposed administrative-territorial reform in UA. No one knows when this is going to happen, whether it will happen and as of now, the info based on that proposed classification would be simply incorrect. The authorities are unpredictable, as we can all see from the mess of the Ukrainian parliamentary crisis, 2006 (any takers btw).

I have a problem with the very first point made above, the claim: "U-t s may be used, however, there is another term ("town"), which is more familiar and common in English, and which adequately describes the concept." I agree that it is more familiar. I agree that it describes a location type reasonably but I disagree that it adequately describes the administrative allocation called in Ukrainian an "smt". Town, as per an administrative division of one country is one thing, as per adm div of another contry it is something else. I suggest to go with more precise terms when describing an administrative status only. We can still say "town" within the article in general. But something like "administratively, XX is an urban-type settlement" (for smt) is useful, IMO. There is a reason, why we all ended up using the term "oblast" rather than an intuitive for the reader "province" or "region". We can still use the word "region" within the articles themselves further in the text about oblasts. But we say that the location belongs to XXX Oblast all the time. Similarly, we should say that the location is an smt. That's just my view on this. --Irpen 01:24, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Good point. I guess, we all share the view that no term in English can completely explain the concept of smt if it is not accomplished by additional explanation. Such additional explanation may provided by a separate article (such as urban-type settlement or townlet), or by a subsection of town article. In any case, I'm withdrawing the last part of the very first point. Still, if we were judging solely on the common meaning of a term, the common meaning of "town" explains the concept of smt at least no worse than the common meaning of "urban-type settlement".


 * Overall, we are referring to urban-type settlement when the formal meaning of smt is required, which is usually in the first line of an article; previously we were referring to townlets. If the description of smt is moved into town article then it would be even easier, but there are pros and cons of such move (similarly to "oblast" vs. "region" as Irpen pointed out). As a bottom line, I would say that the Ukrainian wikicommunity should keep the status quo, the Russian wikicommunity should probably reevaluate whether they use the term "town" in pair with the common English meaning of the word. MapLover 05:48, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Closing summary
I just wanted to provide a closing summary for the discussion above; along with some comments.
 * Is the term "urban-type settlement" confusing?. MapLover voiced a concern that the precise meaning of the term "urban-type settlement" is "a settlement of urban type", which would include smt's, towns, and cities.  I just wanted to comment that I was facing the exact same problem when writing articles about administrative divisions of Russian federal subjects (e.g., Administrative divisions of Adygea).  My solution was to utilize the term "urban settlements" as a descriptive name of the category, and the term "urban-type settlements" for the specific concept of pgt (smt); i.e., urban settlements include cities, towns, and urban-type settlements.  This may not be the most perfect solution, but it works well when avoiding ambiguity is important as long as the terms are applied consistently.
 * Templates. As I mentioned in the beginning of this discussion, the issue with the templates is easily fixable by altering templates' layouts.  We should not avoid using more precise terms just because it would make pretty templates ugly; we should re-design the templates instead.
 * Reform. I second Irpen's statement that we should discard whatever proposed changes until they actually take effect.  The articles we are writing should describe current situation (and the current situation was the primary topic of our discussion).  We can, of course, talk about proposed changes, but we should be careful not to represent them in a way implying they are already in effect.  With that in mind, I found the new Law very interesting.  While the definition of mistechko is virtually unchanged from that of smt, the change of the term would have a profound effect on my arguments dealing with translations.  If the Law ever passes, it will become a lot more reasonable to use the term "town" for Ukrainian locations as opposed to "urban-type settlement".
 * 10K vs. 100K threshold. MapLover suggested that a 10K threshold would be better to distinguish between a "city" and a "town" for Russian locations.  I would rather not do that for the following reasons:
 * The 100K limit is not even a Wikipedia guideline for describing Russian cities/towns, nor should it ever be. It is just an artificial number ensuring marginal convenience.  Replacing it with another artificial number will add no value to the articles about Russian locations, but will add to editors' workload.
 * 10K somehow seems too low, although it is just my personal observation. I was born and raised in an urban-type settlement with the population of roughly 30K; the settlement was later granted town status, which it still retains despite the dwindled population (it is slightly less than 20K now).  Calling such a location "a city" seems like an overstretch; it just does not sound right.  Again, this is not too scientific; just an observation.
 * Coming back to my earlier proposal to call oblast-level goroda "cities" and raion-level ones "towns". In Russia, raion-level goroda usually have a lot smaller populations than oblast-level ones; in fact, population size is one of the determinant factors for deciding whose jurisdiction a gorod should fall under.  Dividing cities/towns along those lines allows for a more natural solution&mdash;there is no artificial set population limit, yet the population requirement (a town is smaller than a city) is fulfilled.  Settlement status is also not ignored.  The downside is that such a division is just as hard to justify from the "no original research" point of view as the division by set population threshold.
 * Uniqueness. The concept of urban-type settlements is quite unique to xUSSR.  Urban-type settlements are like cities in that their population are employed in industries other than agriculture, and they are like villages in that the sizes of their population are comparable to villages'.  The "industry/agriculture" segregation is not a decisive factor for a settlement status in other countries, so that makes it necessary to utilize a custom term ("urban-type settlement") instead of bringing in an analogy ("town").
 * Vagueness. There were some concerns that the term "urban-type settlement" is too vague.  While I agree that it sounds vague, I was unable to find this same term to be used for any other purposes than describe the smt/pgt concept in xUSSR.  It is clear that even if alternate uses exist, they are not numerous, and can be dealt with the disambiguation or with multiple sections in the urban-type settlement article (town already has sections particular to various countries).
 * So, what's with "town"? I have no problem using the term "town" to refer to smt's/pgt's in situations where colloquial terms are acceptable, such as in "this American explorer briefly visited a Russian town of Palana in 1999".  Spelling out "urban-type settlement" here would sound silly and unnatural, and would just put a barrier in natural flow of reading.  Something like "Palana is an urban-type settlement in Koryakia" is, of course, a totally different matter.

Hopefully this is sufficient for a closure. If anyone has any additional comments or insights, feel free to re-open this thread.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:18, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

As far as the proposal to call oblast-level містa "cities" and raion-level ones "towns": just to be clear, is there any current differentiation in Ukrainian? I have been to many cities and towns in the US and there doens't seem to be any rhyme or reason why some are labellled cities and others are labelled towns. An important distinction to be sure, but aren't we artificially subdividing?--tufkaa 18:29, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
 * In Ukraine, the population of "мiста обласного значення" on average is smaller than the population of "мiста районного значення". Check out the list of cities in Ukraine.
 * A view that in the U.S. cities and towns are labeled as such with no clear reason is rather superficial. In New England the subdivision by cities and towns is an important issue. In Massachussets, by State Constitution in order to apply for city status a town needs 12,000 habitans. --MapLover 04:49, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The first fact is an interesting one; one I did not know about. Can anybody find (and post a link here) the appropriate Ukrainian government document dealing with assigning of oblast vs. raion status, please?&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:12, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Oops, sorry, I flipped it. It should be in the obvious way: "мiста обласного значення" on average are bigger than "мiста районного значення". Check by yourself.
 * But I own you something interesting, so here it is:
 * "...відомо, міста в Україні де факто діляться на три категорії: міста національного, обласного (республіканського в АР Крим) та районного значення. Проте критеріїв такого розмежування у законодавчих актах не наведено. Більш того, у законах наявна неоднозначність, яка дозволяє по-різному трактувати статус територіальних одиниць міського типу. Так, лише у Бюджетному кодексі (2001) проводиться розмежування типів міських поселень – там визначаються контингенти доходів та видатків бюджетів міст районного та обласного значення, інші же рамкові закони такого поділу не передбачають. У Конституції України не застосовується поділ територіальних громад міських поселень за критерієм адміністративного підпорядкування, йдеться про територіальні громади міст взагалі. У Законі України „Про самоврядування” регламентовані основні аспекти діяльності територіальних громад міст без будь-якого їхнього поділу на міста районного та обласного значення. Таким чином, законодавство не дає достатніх підстав визначити, чим саме відрізняються міста різного типу. Проте, виходячи з тексту Бюджетного кодексу, фінансовий статус міст різного типу має бути різним, оскільки розрізняються їхня структура доходів та видаткові повноваження." --MapLover 15:37, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks, this was very interesting and surprising. I was thinking along the lines that if in Russia there is a well-defined difference between oblast- and raion-level cities/towns, then there must be one in Ukraine as well, since the structure is exactly the same.  Well, I was wrong.  Not that your findings make things any easier now, but this information is good to know in any case.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Honestly, the citation above sounds strange to me. It’s hard to believe that cities in Ukraine are subdivided into cities of oblast subordinance and cities of raion subordinance only de facto, without any juridical document, which sets such subdivision. The claim that the author is making is a bit strong. It may be that he didn’t find any law that regulates such subdivision. The author is a docent in Economics, not in Law, or Geography. Regardless of whether he is right or wrong, the fact that he didn’t find any regulation on city subdivision is an indication that such regulation (if it exists) is not so easy to find. The website of Verkhovna Rada hosts a database on all Law of Ukraine passed by the parliament (as well as regulations by other branches of the government). I was searching this database and like the author of the citation above I didn’t find the desired regulation on city subdivision, but let me share a few findings.
 * (1) The reform of Ukrainian subdivions (адміністративно-територіальна реформа) is under consideration for 9 years already. Three convocations of the parliament have been working on it, and still no Law has been passed. Tracing it back to 1997, it was passed by the parliament, but vetoed by the President, and sent back to the parliament. The 1997 version of the Law defines the terminology "Міста районного значення" (Стаття 10), "Міста республіканського  (Автономної  Республіки Крим), обласного значення" (Стаття 11), and "Міста, що мають спеціальний статус" (Стаття 12). ,
 * (2) The earliest trace to the term "місто районного значення " I have found in 1993 Law passed by Verkhovna Rada and sighned by President Kravchuk (document 3120-12)
 * (3) The earliest trace to the term " місто районного підпорядкування " I have found in 1970 Order of Soviet of Ministries of UkrSSR signed by Scherbitskyi (document 620-70-п)
 * (4) In 2004 the Cabinet of Ministries ordered (document 21-2004-п) to modify its previous Order dated 1993 by changing слова "міст обласного підпорядкування" та "міст районного підпорядкування" - відповідно словами "міст обласного значення" та "міст районного значення".
 * Not so much of info, but hopefully it gives at least some direction for further search. --MapLover 18:12, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Even thought the population of "мiста областного значення" is smaller on average than the population of "мiста районного значення", they are both considered мiста. I'm just wary about introducing an artificial differentiation where none exists. Perhaps after reforms are made, some differentiation will occur, but at present they are all referred to as мiста.
 * The point about US cities I was trying to make, is that there is no federal code (of which I am aware of) which means that you can visit some "towns" with dwarf other "cities".--tufkaa 14:14, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
 * United States is a federation. There are written rules (in came cases, written in Constitution) for subdivion by cities and towns within a state (for some states, mostly in New England). But the rules are different across states.

There is a difference in choosing what to call something when introducing it in the first paragraph of the article where we want to relay to the reader the info on the administrative status of the location and with what we use informally further down the text for a better style. Town or city carry little info to the reader about the location's administrative status. OTOH, the U-t s, does. We just need to find a way to relay the info to the reader correctly and the use within the articles are much more liberal. --Irpen 18:34, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Kiev Template
Please take a look at Template talk:Kiev for a proposed change to the template. Let me know what you think!--tufkaa 21:13, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Cities of Oblast Subordinance
This is to discuss міста областного значення and how to refer to their status (if at all) in the articles about specific міста областного значення. The current wording is:

The city is designated as its own separate raion (district) within the oblast.

This is most often used in conjunction with a raion, such as:

Serving as the administrative center of the XXXsky Raion (district), the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast.

User:AlexPU has suggested either removing this fact from all such articles or rewording it so that it is less confusing. My preference would be to include the fact that a city is a містo областного значення, however I do not object to the notion of coming up with a mutually agreed upon wording which we can use as the standard for all cities of that nature. I look forward to reading your opinions.--tufkaa 20:08, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, we could include the term or even a short sentence in each city article, if only:
 * the addition will be linked to the general article where readers could find extended explanation
 * we discuss and agree the wording of that addition
 * Good idea is to translate and explain місто обласного значення, e.g., as a section of this article. Give more of your ideas on that
 * BTW, it's not only about місто обласного значення: місто районного значення and райцентр are related problems. And mentioning of Romtsio Bezsmertnyi's 2005 territorial reform would also be great.AlexPU 08:22, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree that "a city of oblast subordinance" should not be named as "a separate raion within the oblast".

One view is that Oblast consists of Raions, i.e "A" consists of "B". And there is a special type of "B", which is called "cites of oblast subordinance".

The other view is that Oblast consists of Raions and Cities of Oblast subordinance, i.e. "A" consists of "B" and "C". I think, this one is the correct description of Ukrainian subdivisions. MapLover 20:43, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

See Zaporizhia Oblast for the table I inserted. I converted the table in Subdivisions of Ukraine to list the raions and містa обласного значення. Just throwing it out there.--tufkaa 01:02, 22 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I attempted to introduce "munilipalities" in Template:Zaporizhzhia Oblast. Check it out. But I think the main objective should be presenting all мicта uniformly as cities. The illustration of a fact that some мicта are of oblast subordinance, and the other are of raion subordinance is a secondary objective. --MapLover 03:47, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Subordinance suggestion
My 2c to this. It is indeed useful to relay to the reader the fact that a certain location within raion differs from a location next to it by having an official status "місто областного значення". However, I also agree that the direct translation into English as, e.g. the "town/city of oblast significance" or similar is useless and confusing. Such a statement would also bear no info to the reader not accustomed to Soviet/post-Soviet terminology. Tufkaa's version ("designated as a separate raion within oblast") is intended to relay this info to the reader in an understandable way, which is the right approach. However, doing it via "raion on its own"-like phrase is confusing. Such location is not a raion, which is a specific term. It is a "місто областного значення". Aren't we better off telling the reader what exactly is implied by this status? For instance we could have the articles on such location include the sentence.
 * However, Shepetitvka, despite being an administrative center of the Shepetivsky Raion is subbordinated directly to the Khmelnytskyi Oblast ([[oblast|province]) government rather than the local raion authorities.

I don't insist that my phrasing is optimal, but AFAIK, the oblast/raion "significance" means just that, being subjected directly to the authorities one level higher that the administrative division it belongs to.

I will add that to Shepetivka to le the ball rolling. --Irpen 17:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
 * My additional one cent to this. Perhaps if you could write an article explaining what exactly "of oblast significance" (or, alternatively, "under the oblast's jurisdiction" as this same concept is described for Russian cities and towns) is, and then link to that article from the intro, it would not be as confusing:
 * Shepetivka is a city of oblast significance in...
 * Better yet, move this information to the infobox ("Subordination: oblast", or "Jurisdiction: raion", or whatever); this way the information is retained and confusion is eliminated.
 * Wording such as "designated as a separate raion" is very confusing, I agree. First, it's still a city, not a raion.  Second, cities and raions have different statuses, even though they are technically subordinated on the same level.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

By no means I insist my wording is the best. Something Ezhiki suggested may be even better. I beleive this is a relatively simple issue, unlike the one above, which is more difficult to settle. --Irpen 18:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

From my end, the language I used was meant to explain to readers via analogy concepts similar to those expressed above. Everyone's welcome opinions have convinced me that we can create a term that's more accurate for містa областного значення. However, the suggested wording seems a bit odd to my ear and not very clear about what we want to convey.

Here is a proposed wording:
 * Netishyn is not part of any raion (district) within the oblast, but rather is a special municipality (or special municipality) subordinate directly to the oblast government.

and in other cases:
 * Serving as the administrative center of the Shepetivsky Raion (district), Shepetivka itself is not part of that or any other raion within the oblast, but rather is a special municipality (or special municipality) subordinate directly to the oblast government.

Possibly creating an article or subsection in Subdivisions of Ukraine explaining Special municipalities, i.e. містa XXX значення (містa областного значення, містa районного значення, etc.).--tufkaa 04:31, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I have a problem with "not being part". It is a part geographically and not a part administratively which basically means not being subject to the raion authorities but to the Oblast authorities directly. --Irpen 05:03, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Could we go with the following and then explain all the details in city of oblast subordinance article/subsection (or please suggest a better name)
 * Shepetivka is a city of oblast subordinance, and the administrative center of Shepetivsky Raion (district).

MapLover 05:57, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

For my own understanding, I was under the impression that Shepetivka (much like Kiev) serves as an administrative center, meaning it holds the raion councils, but is not a part of the Shepetivsky Raion. When you say it is a part of the raion geographically, what does that mean? It is situated inside the raion, but its territory is not the territory of the raion. Please clarify. Thanks. --tufkaa 14:47, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The problem I have is being "not part of" sounds ambiguous. The issue we want to relay is that Shepetivka's authorities do not report to the raion's authorities but instead report to one level higher (oblast) ones. The best way is to say that directly rather than via more confusing "not part" wording. That's just me but I find "not part" confusing. --Irpen 17:54, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Guys, think positive. Shepetivka is not a part of Canada, is not located in Africa, is not an island. There are many things Shepetivka is not a part of. But (1) it is a city of oblast subordinance, and (2) it serves as an administrative center of Shepetivskyi Raion. I think this is all we should mention. MapLover 18:55, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Fine with be if we have an of the oblast subbordinance article where it is explained that such cities simply report to the oblast rather than raion authorities. --Irpen 18:59, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, but aren't all cities, towns, etc. within an oblast subordinate to that oblast? Directly or indirectly, they all report to the oblast state administration. That's why I think the wording in the above proposals isn't adequate. We have to explain to the reader that Shepetivka is different from Netishyn which is also different from Horodok.--tufkaa 19:20, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * This difference would be explained by stating that Shepetivka is a "city of oblast subordinance", and Netishyn is a "city of raion subordinance", and the terms "city of oblast subordinance" and "city of raion subordinance" being explained in separate articles. And, again, I don't insist on terminology "city of oblast subordinance", but I think it's good enough. Or, instead we may introduce "city of direct oblast subordinance" if you really think that this way it's better. Or, any other terminology proposals are welcome. We may go with "city of oblast significance" or "city of oblast importance", etc. MapLover 20:17, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

What about City Municipality as used in Crimea? Are these the same thing?--tufkaa 15:28, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
 * These 11 City Municipalities are "міста республіканського значення". Crimea is a republic, not oblast, therefore they are called this way, but they are similar to "міста обласного значення" in the rest of Ukraine. In Crimea there are also 5 "міст районного значення", еxactly as elsewhere. In total, 16 cities.
 * Sevastopol is really strange. Officially, Balaklava does not exist as a separate settlement. There is only Balaklavskyi Raion, as one of Raions of Sevastopal. Contrary, a much smaller city, Inkerman does exist, as a city of raion subordination of Balaklavskyi Raion :) --MapLover 16:28, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Looking at Country subdivision and Administrative division for guidance, the term Regional municipality intrigued me. With that in mind, what about the following? I'm not wedded to the wording (oblast municipality?), I'm just proposing a unified approach to містa XXX значення. --tufkaa 17:02, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
 * For a мicто I would prefer the word "city", not "municipality". Currency "municipality" is reserved to refer to the cities with special status (Kiev and Sevastopol). MapLover 23:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I was cleaning out my place last night, and came across a book I had picked up at a thrift store and had completely forgotten about: Geography of the U. S. S. R. by Paul Lydolph (1977, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0471557242). Thinking there might be something about this topic, I scanned the index for "administration". The book described "rayons" as the smallest division within the USSR, and that there were 2 kinds of "rayons": "city rayons" and "rural rayons". Is he talking about містa областного значення?--tufkaa 20:54, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * He is most likely talking about selsoviets. Oblast- vs. raion-level cities are also possible, but I'd need a bit more context.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

That was it as far as context. I will quote the sentences when I get back home. He wrote about oblasts, "krays", okrugs, autonomy, and then added 2 sentences about "rayons". I will also check if he refers to selsoviets elsewhere in the book.--tufkaa 21:54, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * raion (pl., raiony) A low-level territorial and administrative subdivision for rural and municipal administration. A rural raion was a county-sized district in a krai (q.v.), oblast (q.v.), autonomous republic (q.v.), autonomous okrug (q.v.), or union republic (q.v.). A city raion was similar to a borough in some large cities in the United States.
 * From Glossary -- Soviet Union at the Library of Congress/Federal Reasearch Division. So perhaps he was talking about the Subdivisions of Kiev, etc.--tufkaa 22:48, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The terminology "city raion" = "urban raion" is used for raions of a big city. (See the first two columns in )
 * A few more words about raions as subunits of a city. As we know, cities in Ukraine are subdivided into 3 mutually excluded categories: special, мiста обласного значення, мiста районного значення. In additional to that, big cities are subdivided into районы. Such cities are named мicта з районним подiлом. There are only 26 such cities. Usually, they are Oblast centers. All of them are мiста обласного значення and special cities (Kiev and Sevastopol). --MapLover 23:18, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Speaking on subdivisions there is one question, which I think is not addressed well so far. I think we should draw a line between administrative subdivision and territorial (geographic) subdivision. The line is not so visible on oblast or raion level, but it’s clearly visible on lower levels (смт, селище, село). As an example, each Oblast (as a territorial unit) has an Oblast Rada (as an administrative unit), each city (except Chernobyl, Prypiat) has a City Rada. However, on average there is one Selo Rada per each three Sela. An article on Rada as a council is absent. An article on Soviet (council) covers only Soviet time. Selsoviet is probably the most updated, but also confusing as it mixes (1) geographic units, (2) local Soviets, and (3) local Administrations. MapLover 23:12, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

List of raions
I've been adding these lists of raions in table format into the oblast articles. Listing all the raions contained within an oblast is probably unnecessarily lengthens these articles (especially since they are listed in the template), so I created List of raions in Ukraine by Oblast. We should probably have the equivalent listing all raions alphabetically. We can then link to this from the oblast page, if one were searching for a list of all raions within that oblast. I haven't thought about rewording the text in the individual articles yet minus the template, so I plan to leave the templates in for know.

Please let me know what you think about developing a comprehensive list like this, and if we should include population (like the List of cities in Ukraine by Oblast does, and how else to format it, etc. Thanks!--tufkaa 22:24, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
 * You folks are probably getting tired of me with my Russian analogies :), but do you think making a dedicated article for each Ukrainian oblast would a better solution? In my opinion, one article listing all raions will get a bit too long; to the point where people might hesitate to add to it just because of it.  Ideally, a locator map of each raion would be quite helpful (see, for example, Administrative divisions of Adygea&mdash;this is how all Russian federal subjects will eventually be formatted; note that this is not simply a list of raions), and you might want to add some other overview information later.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:09, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I have thought about doing this for Ukrainian subdivisions for some time now, but never really put it into use. The current solution is fine just as well, but I would rather have an outline of subdivisions like here (even if it will be inside the oblast article), instead of a table of raions. Also, is there a possible way to make the table into two columns? Because it gets kind of long like this... —dima /sb.tk/ 17:48, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Expanding further
This was posted at Template talk:Poltava Oblast, regarding proposed changes to Template Poltava Oblast and Template:Zaporizhzhia Oblast:

IMHO, Template:Administrative divisions of Ukraine is the most simple and elegant of all Ukrainian navigational templates (although I added the Tryzub, the elegant design preceded me, and I would like to praise the person responsible). For this reason, I suggested a change at Template talk:Zaporizhzhia Oblast to change the oblast templates to something more like Template:Ukraine. The goal would be to make the individual templates smaller, and then making individual templates for individual raions. The raion templates would list all cities, towns, and villages within the raion. Once those are established: Also, I liked the consistency of using the coats of arms on the left and the flags on the right. Following the pattern, the raion templates would have the oblast flag on the right, as the oblast templates have the Ukrainian flag on the right.--tufkaa 17:05, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Cities, towns and villages which are subordinate to the raion only, and which do not serve as administrative centers for raions, would only have the raion template.
 * Raions, cities which are subordinate to the oblast, as well as cities, towns and villages which serve as raion centers, would have their raion template as well as the oblast template listed in their article.
 * Oblasts, cities with special status, as well as cities which serve as oblast centers, would have their raion template, the oblast template, as well as the Ukraine template listed in their article.
 * Please check Template:Oblast and Template:Cherkasy Oblast. What do you think? --MapLover 23:50, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
 * That's more like it. Great idea! But perhaps we should make the Oblast template have a section Cities of Oblast subordinance (to not include cities in Raion section) and a separate Other cities section like on Template:Poltava Oblast right now. —dima /sb.tk/ 01:23, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * In my view, the navigational template would be the most clear if we include 4 categories: Raions (w/o cities), Cities (all of them; regardless of subordinantion), Urban-type settlements, and Villages. But, if you want to split cities into two categories, I guess, it would be also fine. If this is the case, then let's just name them properly, i.e. "cities of oblast subordinance", and "cities of raion subordinance". The latter is more clear than "other cities". So, let's decide. --MapLover 23:00, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, I agree with you now about having four subdivision categories in the template and removing the city from the "raion" section. But we could also do with what we have now... If you really want to change it, I guess we could. —dima /sb.tk/ 03:37, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

THE BIG MAP


Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 14:29, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Names (again)
Hi

I am sure this has come up before but the english terms are pretty sketchy.

First there are some major differences between UK and American.

In the UK a city is a town that has city status, it used to be that it had to have a cathedral to be called a city but now it is a city charter. Some cities are very small, and much smaller than some towns. For example the City of Salford - it is a tiny area in the middle of the Manchester city centre. It also has a

So, the list from largest down to smallest:

UK...............................USA Region...(East Anglia).....? County...(Norfolk)...........State Greater..(Norwich)...........? City.....(of Norwich)..........? Town.....(Sprowston)........? Village..(Rackheath)........?


 * See this map
 * Greater Norwich - the city, the area that Norwich has grown into as a conurbation. Normally referred to as a metropolitan borough
 * City of Norwich - the area which is administered by the city council. Outside these areas the County councils take control.

Hope we can get this fixed as most of this makes no sense to me, and I am pretty well clued up (well I thought I was) Chaosdruid (talk) 11:31, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Lots of renaming to do
The articles of the classification of the divisions of Ukraine is a mess caused by ignorant "Anglification" of the terminology. Major issues of confusion:
 * 'Oblast' is intermittently called 'region'. Confusion: In the official terminology of Ukraine 'region' is a generic term for major dichotomy: "territorial area"(oblast, raion, etc) vs. "populated place" (city, village, etc.)
 * Confusion in sncreaed by the term "city of regional significance", which has two issues:
 * As I wrote above, "raion" is a region in native uk: terminology
 * 'Significance' is a brainless calque; the correct rendering is "subordination".
 * селище	selysche somebody translated as	'village', whereas there are two types of selysche: urban-type settlement and rural-type settlement. Someone tried to translate the first term as 'town', which further increases the confusion, since nobody can really tell city from town even in English.

There are some other kinds of mess. I don't have time to deal with this systematically (not really my area of interest). I only fixed the section Administrative divisions of Ukraine and suggest to start from it. -M.Altenmann >t 08:13, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
 * There was a recent discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ukraine, kind of inconclusive (it is formally still ongiong), but my reading of consensus is that urban-type settlement should be used for urban localities which have no town status; there was no consensus when one should use town/city, and these two are often intermittent. For rural-type settlements, we have selo and village, and I think these two have different status in Ukraine (similarly to Russia). Concerning city of regional significance, we have the article City of oblast significance (Ukraine), which would probably the best starting point if we want to change smth. --Ymblanter (talk) 08:25, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Btw I am looking at all raion and city/town/urban-type settlement articles systematically when I create the administrative division articles per oblast and add the latest population estimate. If we decide smth now I will propagate the results to the articles eventually.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:32, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
 * As a side note, both "significance" and "subordination" (as well as "jurisdiction") are used fairly equally in English when it comes to this term, so it's not correct to state that one is significantly (pardon the pun) more correct than the other. With Ukrainian it's at least easy since Ukraine only has one term (unlike Russian, which has a bunch), so it doesn't really matter which translation is picked, as long as it is used consistently.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 3, 2014 ; 13:09 (UTC)
 * re: "fairly equally": it does not mean "fairly equally good". "Subordination" is a term with exact meaning for what is to be meant. Since wp must be consistent, we must pick one, and my vote is for 'sigfnce' of course, in the lede all seen translation must be listed, including "City of regional importance" (eg Ivano-Frankivsk in wp).-M.Altenmann >t 15:50, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
 * , Ukrainian parliament uses the term "significance" over "subordination", hence, in Ukraine there are no cities of any subordination, but rather significance. Also, regions is a general term that combines oblasts, the autonomous republic of Crimea and cities with special status. All of them are regions of Ukraine. See Regions of Ukraine and their composition. Raions are not regions, but rather could be interpreted as districts or administrative units of regions (regional subdivision). By the way, administrative units of regions are entities that compose each region and include raions (sometimes referred to as rural raions), cities of regional significance (including oblast and republican significance) and raions in city for selective cities. Each region is further subdivided into local communities simply referred to as radas (councils, i.e. miskrada, silrada, and others). Cities that are not of special status or regional significance are always categorized as of district significance and could be part of bigger cities or districts (may they be rural or in city). Urban settlements are part of urban populated places in Ukraine and may be an administrative center of a district. Villages compose what is known as silrada (rural council) which is a rural community and part of district or city. Rural councils may consist of individual villages or multiple villages and sometimes include populated places known as settlements that sometimes referred to as rural settlements to distinguish them from the bigger urban settlements. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 17:25, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

That's exactly what I meant: the aqrticle is a complete mess, and whatever you write in talk page is useless for wikipedia, unless you provide references and fix the article. Yiou are experienced enough editor to know that talk pages are not to explain how stupid I am, but for improvement of the 'article. (A) Ukrainian parliament uses Ukrainian language. We write in English. Ukraine, like some other post-Sovs inherited the terminilogy from Soviet times. And in this context "significance" means "subordination". If yuo dont believe me here is the in ukrainian:

Питання віднесення населених пунктів до відповідних категорій адміністративно-територіальних одиниць регулюється Порядком вирішення питань адміністративно-територіального устрою Української РСР, затвердженим Указом Президії Верховної Ради Української РСР від 12 березня 1981 року.[4] Зазначеним порядком установлено вимоги, зокрема щодо чисельності населення, під час віднесення населених пунктів до категорії міст обласного та районного підпорядкування, а також селищ міського типу, а саме:
 * для міст обласного підпорядкування чисельність населення повинна становити понад 50 тис. жителів;
 * для міст районного підпорядкування – понад 10 тис. жителів;

i.e. znachennya and pidporyzdkuvanna are synonyms. And in English we better choose the less confusing term. "city of raion Significance" may easily understood as "city of the same significane as raion" i.e., "city of raion subordination". However if you insist on using a calque of Ukrainian, you must provide definition and always link to it. -M.Altenmann >t 16:49, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

(B) And yes, this is what I wrote myself: "region" is not "raion" in context of Ukraine. Therefore we must get rid of the nonsense term "regional significance" which it seems is not used in Ukrainian sources or, if I am mistaken, provide a de finition and always link to it. Because I clearly see that some English language purists translate 'raion' as "native Engilsh" 'region' and here comes 'regional significance'. -M.Altenmann >t 16:49, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

(C) re: "cities ...part of bigger cities" Sounds strange. Please provide reference. The only thing I may think is that you are lumping together the concepts of misto and mis'krada, and (see below) you are not thinking (or writing) clearly about 'radas' -M.Altenmann >t 16:49, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

(D) Now it looks like you got tired writing a long text, and with silrada you create a total confusion. I don't even want to write about it here, since, as I wrote above the purpose is to improve article not your or mine brains. Therefore, references, please, and not here but into the (improved, clarified, and expanded) article. -M.Altenmann >t 16:49, 21 December 2014 (UTC)


 * , look what you wrote, "Ukraine, like some other post-Sovs inherited the terminilogy from Soviet times. And in this context "significance" means "subordination". That is not true. You also mentioned Law of the Ukrainian SSR, a country that does not exist any longer. You are also requesting references which I did mentioned before and you simply choose not to react to that. Did not I mention that the Ukrainian parliament uses precisely "significance" rather than "subordination"? Any status of cities in Ukraine is regulated by the Ukrainian parliament and no one else if you did not know that.

Second of all, you are arguing about regional significance. For your information region is a general term for any primary subdivision of Ukraine. Once again, that information is provided by the Supreme Council of Ukraine on its website. The regions include 24 oblasts (which some people prefer to call provinces), one autonomous republic (which is temporarily occupied the Russian Federation), and 2 cities with special status (one of which is also temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation). What does that mean? It means that any cities within the regions are of regional significance and could be referred to as cities of oblast significance or of republican significance in case with Autonomous Republic of Crimea (i.e. Simferopil).

Third issues that you mentioned concerns "cities ... part of bigger cities". Well, the problem here is that the basic unit of administrative territorial division in the post-Soviet countries are in fact councils (soviet or rada), not settlements. Wikipedia articles claimed that the lowest type of subdivision for Ukraine is its populated places such as cities, villages, urban settlements so on. That claim is not exact. The other issue is to relate the concept of council or soviet to general public. It basically means a municipality, but it sounds not normal concerning rural populated places. Names like silrada or miskrada are not real words, but rather are portmanteau, a combination of words. And for that purpose we also must incorporate concept of selyshchna rada. Don't you think it is quite overwhelming? And in many cases a city municipality (miskrada) coincides with city (misto). About the concept of rural councils I agree that it is confusing, yet it is however quite important. There is not a lot of literature available that discusses the issue of administrative division and mostly is based on the information provided by Ukrainian parliament.

Altenmann, you see, when I first read articles concerning the administrative division of Ukraine that claimed that Ukraine is simply divided into oblast, raions and cities. That is all! Now, how do you explain location of Inkerman city, or city of Vynnyky? Why Kiev is not part of Kiev Oblast? Where does the urban settlement of Kotsyubynske located? The way Ukrainian administrative territorial system is built, it is not so simply as someone wrote that it was divided into oblast-raion-city. There are territorial division and along with it there is categorization of cities which goes parallel to it. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 17:40, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree that there is not a whole lot of literature and some terms are vague, confusing i.e, without formal legal definition. This even recognized by the constitutional court of Ukraine. All the more the information must be added strictly based on sources, not out of your head. For example, your edit summary "self governed territories??? where that information was taken? " shows your lack of attention. The source was clearly indicated, " according to Constitution of Ukraine", in particular


 * Стаття 140. Місцеве самоврядування є правом територіальної громади - жителів села чи добровільного об'єднання у сільську громаду жителів кількох сіл, селища та міста - самостійно вирішувати питання місцевого значення в межах Конституції і законів України.


 * Once again, you don't have to teach me in talk page, just write article based on sources. Otherswise I will put 17 {cn} tags. -M.Altenmann >t 23:02, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Clarification
The more I read this, the more I'm confused. So, does every lower-level administrative division also correspond to a municipality/municipal incorporation? I guess the charter showing the levels of division kind of confuses me, and then how the page is organized. For instance, since "cities" can exist on all three different levels of administration, is it proper to stick the description under "councils"? That makes them seem as if they only exist as the third level of administration. Perhaps, it'd make sense to be more explicity about the difference between an administrative division and a municipal division. Actually, I'm not sure that there is a difference reading the page. It could be that every part of an administrative division is municipally incorporated on one level of the other. Can anyone make this clearer to me, and then clarify all of this on the page? --Criticalthinker (talk) 13:31, 13 December 2014 (UTC) Now, we don't normally create separate articles about urban okrugs because there is very little that can be said about them which can't be upmerged into the article about the city proper; we simply redirect the "XXX Urban Okrug" pages to the article about the corresponding city (with the urban okrugs which span more than one administrative division being a notable exception—those do deserve a page of their own). With Crimea, however, since Ukrainian editors deemed it necessary to create separate pages for each municipality, it makes all the sense to redirect the Crimean "XXX Urban Okrug" pages to the municipality targets, since it's a closer match. The municipality articles are supposed to have a section about the Russian aspect, of course (and indeed, "Yalta Municipality" does, thanks to Yaroslav). With all this in mind, I've reverted the Yalta-specific portion of this edit (because Yalta Urban Okrug is not a special case, at least as far as Russians are concerned) and added a ref to source the status statement, and I do endorse this revert (note also that the citation preceding the bulleted list already supports the statement to which a "citation needed" tag was appended). I hope this resolves the confusion.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 26, 2014 ; 14:33 (UTC)
 * I see what's been confusing me. It's how the word "city" is used in this article, sometimes it's used as an administrative division and sometimes as a territorial division (large urban settlement).  I'd propose what every use of the term be placed in proper context on this page.  So, when were speaking of a "city" in the context of an administrative divison at all levels (special, regional, and raion significant/subordination), perhaps we should use the term "municipality" or "municipal city."  When we're speaking of a "city" in the context of a territorial division (large urban settlement) then we can stick to the term "city" since that's the most well known connotation of the word.  Does this make sense to all of you?  What has been clarified for me is that municipal status can be granted at every level of the administrative ladder, but that not every inch of Ukraine is covered by a municipal council as it is in Russia.
 * Also, it should be made more clear what class an administrative urban-type settlement (селище міського типу) can be. For instance, can an urban-type settlement be of raion or regional significance?  We know that all municipal cities have some administrative level of significance/subordination from this page, but it's not said whether this is true of urban-type settlements.  More explanation in the "Council" section should be added just like "city" gets its own subsection.  There literally seems to be one sentence that even touches on the level of administrative urban-type settlements: "In addition to city municipalities, Ukraine has urban-like municipalities."  And, it's simply under the subsection "Other municipalities" which gives short shrift to administrative urban-type settlements, rural settlements, and villages.  All of these should gets its own subsection just like "cities."  It needs to be made clear if these settlements have or can be granted any level of significance in the way municipal cities are.  --Criticalthinker (talk) 12:23, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * What confusing you is that here and in many other articles different people differently translate Ukrainian terminology into English. And of course, this creates confusion. And therefore I started the section above. But as I see, native Ukrainians don't give a shit, and Engish don't give a fuck for this subject to get together, read some sources and clarify once and for everywhere. For example the terms misto, mis'krara and selische mis'kogo typu - in some article or another someone translates as 'city'. And only if two (Ukrainian) terms are used in the same page someone tries clumsily to distinguish them. Cleaning the mess is less fun than writing about putin khuilo and his moskali.-M.Altenmann >t 17:00, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Just using an example so I can get things clear when talking about territorial/settlement divisions versus administrative/municipal divisions. On the Yalta (municipality) page, under the "subdivision" category in the infobox, it lists 2 cities, 21 urban-type settlements, 1 village, and 9 rural settlements.  My question is on Ukrainian municipal city pages such as this, are those subdivisions territorial-settlement subdivisions or actual administrative-municipal divisions within the larger city municipality?  If it's the latter, does each of these lower-level divisions have local governments (including the two administrative cities)?  What would really help is to see a map of an city municipality broken into its lower constituent administrative parts where applicable, so I can visualize this. --Criticalthinker (talk) 10:00, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You are a liong-time wikipedian, right? By this time you should have known that nobody but you can fix the problem you care. Even you didn't know this before, the recent discussion in this page clearly shows: if you are bothered with something, do it yourself: find references, fill the gaps. If you don't read Ukrainian,... . -M.Altenmann >t 16:56, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Now, as to your question, reading the Ukrainian Constitution, I understood that there are two forms of administration: state administration and local self-government. Some territorial units do not have separate self-government. It this case they are governed by the self-government (rada) of a larger unit. Something to this end I added to this article. As for Yalta, there is even more confusion, buddy. First of all, even Ukrainians themselves complained about the sloppiness of their Constitution and official terminology. In particular,  міськрада (miskrada, "city council") refers both to a self-government organ and to the territory it controlled. This was inherited (actually generalized) from the Soviet times, where rural territories were subdivided into pieces contolled by  "rural councils" (selsoviets). I say "generalized" because "city councils" (gorsoviets) controlled cities proper. The area around city was controlled by city raions with its raisoviets. Now, Ukraine started Europeization, in the direction of the concept of "municipality", but it remained half-cooked: the term for government (miskrada) was  created, but the separate term for municipality which was controlled by miskrada was not. Now, more confusion for Yalta. As you know, it is annexed by Russia now. And Ukrainian government is not operating there. Much as we may not like it, wikipedia has also to desctibe the de facto state of the affairs. And moskali are more systematic in this respect: they introduced the concept of ru:Ялта (городской округ) Yalta City Okrug (please please don't translate 'okrug' as district: this will be the fourth kind of Russian subdivision people are tempted to Anglicize. And I have yet to understand (i.e. find clear references) what the phrase 'Наделить муниципальное образование Белогорский район статусом муниципального района' actually means (the word район is used in two meanings)). And right now I don't know what is the name of the governing body of the Yalta City Okrug. I only know that the project of its Statute was publicly discussed in October. I guess it may be "okrug council"/okrug rada (okrada :-) - a pun). -M.Altenmann >t 17:30, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually, we translate it as Yalta Urban Okrug--Ymblanter (talk) 17:39, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Aha, and creating a mess of the article Yalta Municipality. In Russian wikipedia you have two articles. I suggest to make Yalta Municipality a disambiguation page. -M.Altenmann >t 17:43, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * No, that was someone else. We have similar issues for other subjects of Russian Federation, may be wants to comment on the general approach. I think this is specific for Crimea, since the rest of Ukraine obviously does not have urban okrugs.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:47, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It does not have the term "urban okrug", and, as I said (twice), Ukrainians, including the Superior Court, are aware of this confusion, because some 'miskradas' effectively control a territory which may be called urban okrug, "municipality", or whatever you want. (and because of this confusion an old veriosn of this article had a text something like "some cities include smaller cities") Which reminds me an old Russian deeply phylosophical joke about Vovochka - Marivanna (an archetypal name of teacher in Russian jokes) asks: "Children, who knows the word starting with the letter Ж?" Vovochka jumps up: "Жопа" (arse), Marivanna!" The teacher blushes, 'What are youe saying Vovochka, there is no such a word!" - "How strange Marivanna, we have Жопа, but we have no word!" -M.Altenmann >t 17:59, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * P.S. I wanted to say "In Russian wikipedia you, Muscovites, have two articles", not personally you, Ymblanter, who, I realize now, are not really a Muscovite. -M.Altenmann >t 18:10, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Since Russia believes it owns Crimea (and has effective control over it), it obviously imposes its own laws on its territory. From that point of view, in terms of municipal divisions Yalta Urban Okrug is no different than any other urban okrug in Russia. It certainly does not have any special status compared to any other urban okrugs.

re: very little that can be said about them which can't be upmerged. Begging to disagree. "Very little" is usually because wikipedians grew "very lazy". I don't know about other MunOkr In the case of Yalta the description of its okrug can be rather large and "upmerging" flies in the face of WP:SUMMARY. -M.Altenmann >t 18:28, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
 * P.S. "very lazy" includes me: Recently I laid my hands on the Statute of the Yalta Okrug (I even linked it somewhere as a ref) but was lazy to process it. In fact, this 100-page document is good for at least 3 separate articles, and you are talking about "upmerging". -M.Altenmann >t 18:28, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. It is not at all unusual to upmerge information when little of it is available on hand (and I mean "on hand", not "out there in general"). This does not mean that information cannot be split out later, when it grows to a reasonable size. When I'm working on the municipal divisions and only add one or two sentences, it would be most counterproductive from the maintenance point of view to make those sentences into standalone articles instead of upmerging them into the article about the city proper. At any rate, the municipal status of a city is only one of its many aspects (just like history, geography, economy, culture, etc.). Each such aspect often deserves a separate article, but all too often all we have is a short section within the article about the city. But once that section grows, it can be moved into a separate, detailed article, and the section will then become a short summary of that article. And "laziness", while sometimes certainly a factor, is not necessarily the only one. I, for example, have a to-do list which is longer that my entire contributions list, and obviously I can't be working on everything at once (and neither can you). Temporarily upmerging information until a better time comes (such as when its turn is up in the to-do queue or when someone else feels like working on expanding it) is a very practical solution. Certainly more practical than starting to create a bazillion of one-liners in hopes some assiduous kind soul overcomes "laziness" and starts working on them. I hope that's not the approach you are suggesting.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 26, 2014 ; 18:50 (UTC)
 * Actually, I have a different point of view. When you upmerge various stuff, you get a big article, and people would think: OK big article, must be OK. And unless somebody decides to make it GA or FA, it will forever stay in a hodge-podge state. So I think that a stub has more chances to grow, especially it is wikilinked and interwikilinked. And the fact that you have a huge to-do list simply means that everybody else (with 0.1% exception) has much longer "don't care" lists. And judging from my watchlist, these days 37% of edits are slapping various  tags, 11% are recategorizing, 23% are typo fixing, and, on a bright side, very few vandalisms (this may be because I am watching obscure topics :-) compared to 2-3 years ago. -M.Altenmann >t 01:36, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't really share that view about stubs. It is like communism or religion&mdash;it sounds great in theory but leads to all kinds of atrocities in practice. For example, when User:Dr. Blofeld created about a thousand stubs on Russian districts in 2011 (something I was pretty pissed at him about at the time), maybe a dozen of those grew into anything substantial (less than 1% success rate, and I'm using the term "success" pretty loosely here). The rest I personally had to go through, one by one, essentially re-creating them from scratch, reusing hardly anything (yet still spending time on checking whether anything could be reused or salvaged). That particular stub run finally turned out to be a non-issue, since I was about to start working on those district articles anyway, but most other such runs result in thousands upon thousands of languishing substubs, 99.9% of which stay like that for years, all the while drawing on our limited resources, as they require vandalism watch and maintenance. Out of 250 substubs created in 2011 by another user (who shall remain unnamed, even though he has since left Wikipedia) which I watchlisted, about 50 have so far been prodded and deleted, a dozen was redirected, two (yes, two) were expanded to a still pitiful, but more or less acceptable state, and the rest are still sitting there pretty much unchanged, apart from vandalism reverts and a crapload of bot edits. If this doesn't convince you that massive stub runs tend to be miserable failures and resource hogs, then nothing else probably will :) This is not to say that one should not even consider creating stubs; merely that one should not create series of articles consisting of nothing but stubs (and creating stubs on all Russian urban okrugs would be exactly that). The former are useful, especially when they are strategically interlinked. The latter tend to be a disaster, which, with the rarest of exceptions, nobody ever wants to follow-up with.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 29, 2014 ; 20:58 (UTC)

Urban-type settlements (селища міського типу)
Question, is an urban-type settlement (селища міського типу) always subbordinate to a district, or can it have a higher level of administrative significance? As we now, all city administrations have some level of significance, and can range from cities on the save level as regions (Kiev) all the way down to cities subordinate to raions. But, do urban-type settlements have anything above district significance? --Criticalthinker (talk) 11:14, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
 * No, in Ukraine, they are always subordinate to a district or to a city of oblast significance. Russia is different, they can be of federal significance (big military bases).--Ymblanter (talk) 11:17, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quick response. Perhaps, this would be an interesting fact to add on the urban-type settlements section, here, and the on other pages detailing these administrative subdivisions.  On this page, it seems to go from a "cities" subsection in the "Councils" section before it skips down immediately to "Other municipalities" which seems to detail the rural/village municipalites.  This leaves some confusion about the administrative level of urban-type settlements.  Perhaps, we need three subsections under the "Council" section including "Cities", "Urban-type settlements" and "rural/village municipalities."  It's not made clear exactly what administrative level urban-type settlements are on.  Are they on an equal level as cities of district significance, or are they on the lowest administrative level with rural and village municipalities?  I guess another way to ask this is whether you could theoretically have an urban-type settlement within the boundaries of a city of district significance (місто районного значення)?  Anyone want to clarify that on article page?--Criticalthinker (talk) 21:22, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Correct., the only populated places in Ukraine that have various levels of significance are cities of Ukraine. I think it is mentioned in the article (at least it used to be). After establishment of the Soviet regime in 1920s, all towns (містечка) were re-designated into urban-type settlements. I also used the form of town interchangeably with urban-type settlements out of brevity. Urban-type settlements along with cities compose the urban populated places in Ukraine, unlike villages and rural settlements that are part of rural populated places in Ukraine. As Ymblanter mentioned, urban-type settlements may be part of city municipality (city of regional significance) may it be republican or oblast significance. Urban-type settlements are governed by own local town council, similarly to the cities of district significance. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 23:12, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Cities in the article have their own subsection, because they are the only populated places in Ukraine that have various levels of significance and may include several other cities, towns or villages. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 00:00, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Just my attention, but I'd give each local government (city, urban-type settlement, and village/settlement council) its own subsection to make clear that each is an administrative division. I'm not even sure "urban-type settlement" is even mentioned by name in the "Other municipalities" section despite being a distinct administrative subdivision.  Even a settlement councils get mention. --Criticalthinker (talk) 08:19, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
 * , the fact is that urban-type settlements are not even mentioned in the Constitution of Ukraine. Those are unconstitutional entities. In the constitution they are referred to simply as settlements. Settlement councils imply councils based in urban-type settlements. Please, note that often people confuse a populated place with administrative division, because in Ukraine local government and administrative division where the government is located are named one the same, i.e. the Donetsk city government is the Donetsk City Council (miskrada) and it is located in the Donetsk City Council (miskrada); in Donetsk Oblast, the Donetsk City Council has a status of the city of regional significance; the Donetsk City Council is further divided in urban districts some of which may include other city, town, or rural councils, among which is the Mospyne City Council. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 00:39, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Villages and Rural Settlements
Just a proposal, but I think that the "Fourth Level" category in the 'Ukraine subdivisions sidebar' should be removed, as it gives the impression that villages and rural settlements are administrative divisions, whereas they are simply rural localities/rural populated places. The administrative level below the third level should simply be labeled and listed in the sidebar as "rural council" or silrada. There doesn't appear to be two options for governance in the fourth level, rather two types of localities. Anyone with a better understanding of the language want to make this change? --Criticalthinker (talk) 19:24, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
 * , I corrected it. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 00:18, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Oops, I didn't mean that it needed to be deleted, rather it simply needs to be renamed. As it was, the two locality types (village and rural settlements) were listed under the fourth level, where it should have been the administrative type (rural council).  Rural councils, urban-type settlements, and urban districts aren't all on the same level as cities of district significance, are they? --Criticalthinker (talk) 16:16, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I based the template exactly off of Ukraine's Classification of objects of the administrative-territorial system, which lists those administrative subjects in that exact order; listing the last (fourth level) of classification as including both villages and rural settlements (see here—sorry, no English link available). At its present form without the fourth level—it is simply incorrect. Maybe a simpler way of looking at this concept, is that each administrative level (one, two, etc.) is divided into subjects in the next level. For instance, Oblasts (1 level) are divided into Rural districts (2 level).


 * Rural councils, urban-type settlements, and urban districts are on the same level, judging by the exact same classification system I quoted above. Regardless, this system is very archaic and based upon Soviet jurisdiction and law (and it was last updated in 1997). It is overdue for a revamp, which (hopefully) will start approximately sometime after next year. But until then—all we can do is wait. § DDima 16:43, 24 December 2015 (UTC)


 * , yes, you are right. Rural councils, urban-type settlements and districts in citites are indivisible, so they are on the same level. Someone should change the template back to what you corrected it too.  Thanks. --Criticalthinker (talk) 09:45, 25 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, can someone remove the "fourth level" division? I'd do it, but I'd rather someone who knows this to be the case to do it.  Thanks. --Criticalthinker (talk) 11:56, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * , I recently found an article on Ukrainian Wikipedia uk:Список топонімів України, перейменованих внаслідок «декомунізації» which I would like for you to glance over. (, I would like to invite you to follow it since you expressed interest in it.) In a brief, the article has interesting categorization of items that are subjected to be renamed as part of decommunization in Ukraine. Particularly, it contains such concepts like "administrative units" (Адміністративні одиниці) which include territorial units such as regions (oblasts), districts (raions and urban raions), united communities and others as well as "populated places" (Перелік міст і сіл до перейменування ) or more precisely "list of cities and villages to be renamed". Both categories are clearly divided. At the end of the article it also includes another category pertaining to change of streets names. Such categorization shows that populated places (various types of settlements where population does physically reside) are technically do not relate to administrative units and are not part of the fourth tier of administrative division, per se, in the country. Am I mistaken there or not? It still consistent considering the fact that certain cities are being treated as regions (oblasts, AR Crimea) such as cities with special status, while other cities are being treated as districts (raions, urban raions) such as cities of regional significance. Populated places have its own categorization, particularly the cities in Ukraine which clearly shown in the article List of cities in Ukraine. That list only reflects the administrative division in Ukraine. At the same time populated places other then cities generally fall under the same category as cities of district significance as all of them are included under the administration of a district (raion) where they are located. Also rural settlements are not even mentioned in the Constitution of Ukraine and only exist for statistical purposes (in my opinion). The information on the subject (rural settlements) is very scarce on the internet. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 22:32, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
 * This honestly doesn't seem that complicated. There is no fourth-tier administrative division, so it should be removed from the box.  It's a small change that needs to be made, but an important one.  I propose removing it.  The article for "populated places" can simply be linked in the "see also" category. --Criticalthinker (talk) 18:36, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

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United territorial community
Since "United territorial community" are an agglomeration of adjacent city, settlement and rural councils, would it be more accurate to say that a "United territorial community" is a half-step in responsibilities from any of its individual components, and then maybe a half-step below a city of regional significance? It strikes me as odd that such a territorial agglomeration would also be on the same level as its constituent units/parts. It strikes me that they are an urbanized version of a raion. That is unless these united territorial communities are still subordinate to raion authorities. --Criticalthinker (talk) 10:02, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

A presidential draft law that will abolish some administrative divisions of Ukraine has been sent to parliament (in December 2019)
If the law is passed and some administrative divisions of Ukraine will be abolished ideally this article's content will change..... Also noticeably in the draft law is that the Territorial communities (they keep getting different English translations in different sources) is an integral part of Ukraine's administrative divisions. Something that is not reflected in today's version of this Wikipedia article. The English sources that I used to write about these Territorial communities did never made its status clear.....

More information here and here (in English). —  Yulia Romero  • Talk to me!  14:14, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Capitalization
Should the word "oblast" be capitalized? So far, it's inconsistent - look at the Zhitomir Oblast article.--Adûnâi (talk) 03:16, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, it should be capitalized.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:29, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I mean, it should be capitalized in names xx Oblast, but I guess not as a standing alone word.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:31, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Amalgamated hromada which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 17:20, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Tables in Overview Section
The second table in the Overview section ("Table (After 2020)") is unhelpful in its current form. It shows the raions in cities outside the territorial regime. I'm not sure if this is because that's unclear after the reform of administrative divisions or what, but it's very confusing. The same with the "populated places" category. Everything makes sense in the first chart. Perhaps it'd be best to remove this chart until it's made clear which administrative subdivisions are subordinate to the others? --Criticalthinker (talk) 08:14, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The first table is however outdated. I removed the raions in cities and populated places from the second table; hopefully someone familiar with the details of the reform can fix it later.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:10, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Districts in Cities
I'm curious, with the reform that has subordinated all hromada to raions, has there been any change to the law or constitution dealing with "districts in cities" (райони у містах)? Just curious if they should be added to the table in the overview concerning the current heirarcy of administrative divisions placed below that of the hromada.

Criticalthinker (talk) 11:03, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Odessa § Requested move 11 July 2022
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Odessa § Requested move 11 July 2022. Rei (talk) 00:23, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Third level
Whenever anyone familiar with the language finds the time to edit this, I'd suggest significantly paring down & truncating the "Third level" section of the article. Since the reforms, it might only need a short paragraph or two mentioning that there were two levels/tiers of cities (minus the special regional cities) prior to 2020. A lot of that section was probably too much/confusing an explanation before the reform, and now explanation is mostly irrelevant. But, in mentioning the former levels/status, it'd be very helpful to be consistent & clear with the distinction between legal/statistical status and administrative status (district/regional significant), and emphasize the importance of the latter over the former for the purposes of the article. Criticalthinker (talk) 10:14, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Violence is illegitimate
Crimea is still under control of ukraine. 2600:1014:B15D:8539:AD5D:5AD6:70BB:5ED5 (talk) 05:45, 20 January 2023 (UTC)


 * This is false. Ymblanter (talk) 07:43, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

First level format correction
The format of the "Population density" column of the section "First level" is not correct. The decimal points are erroneously written as commas, making the ranking not work correctly. Can someone please correct this? Windywendi (talk) 19:18, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Bilohorivka listed as "de facto capital" of Luhansk Oblast
Hello all, I have a problem with Bilohorivka being listed as the "de facto capital" of the Luhansk Oblast. I am intimately familiar with the fact that this was the only location under Ukrainian control in the entire region for some time. However, this does not automatically make it a "capital," de facto or otherwise, without reliable sources saying so. SaintPaulOfTarsus (talk) 22:57, 11 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Not just that, but it's not even its own local government, anymore. The article for it says that it's part of the Lysychansk urban hromada. Yes, I agree; I'd remove mention of any de facto administrative center for the time being. Criticalthinker (talk) 11:11, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Currently de facto there is no capital of Luhansk Oblast. I propose just list Sievierodonetsk as a de facto capital in 2014–2022 like in the infobox in the Luhansk Oblast article. --UA0Volodymyr (talk) 04:47, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Urban raion placement in the hierarchy
It was a question even before the change in administration law, but it remains the case that the question is where are urban raions in the hierarchy? With the resubordination of cities of regional subordination, the urban raions in those cities certainly aren't on the second level of subordination, which is where they are currently listed in the article. At the same time, in the special cities, they may very well be seen at this level. It seems that the change to the law leaves them not in this extant hierarchy, but on a parallel one. Any opinions on how they should be shown in this article? Because the vast majority of urban raions are subordinate to the hromadas, so if anything, they are at a fourth level. But the ones in the special cities are functionally hromadas, themselves. Criticalthinker (talk) 06:52, 14 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think this is correct. Ymblanter (talk) 07:34, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * No, I understand that. I was asking if anyone had an opinion on how the level should be listed in the current article. Because I don't think putting it in the "raion" section and level is the best fit. Criticalthinker (talk) 08:07, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I think it is best to put them in a separate section without mentioning the level number. Functionally, raions of Kyiv and Dnipro are the same, it does not make sense to keep them in separate sections. Ymblanter (talk) 09:03, 14 January 2024 (UTC)